Joystick Calibration

You should always calibrate your joystick. By calibrating you make sure that your Joystick is not sending steering comanding values; while it should not when the steering sticks are in neutral position.

Linux

Install the joystick and the jstest-gtk packages via:

$ sudo apt-get install joystick jstest-gtk

Use the graphical jstest-gtk tool (or the commandline jstest) to view/edit your joystick calibration and axis/button mappings.
Start it via:

$ jstest-gtk

Store the calbration

Your calibration and mapping will only be lost once you unplug the joystick, so store your configuration via:

$ sudo jscal-store /dev/input/js0

If you replug your joystick the next time, udev should take care of automatically loading the appropriate configuration.